Do you support or oppose MA's new proposed rent-control measure?

Support (48%) – "Rent control is merely one tool to make housing more affordable. Higher wages are another. Lower insurance costs, lower energy costs, lower public transportation costs - are a few of the other key factors related to affordability. The problem of affordability has to be attacked on all fronts."

• "Rent needs to stay affordable for people to live, and predatory landlords need to be kept in check for that to happen. There are other ways to create incentives for new building that should be explored in conjunction with rent controls."

"Housing cost are out of control and wages are not keeping pace with inflation. Low income families and adults are priced out of areas and this leads to an increase in homelessness with few shelters and transitional housing to provide housing services."

• "It still allows for increased rent, but at reasonable increments. In CA, we have a similar policy and it hasn’t hindered building new apartment buildings. Other laws that we have make building, period, financially prohibitive, which means all new buildings that go up on luxury. This kind of rent control allow people to stay in the rented apartment for longer, creating stability in housing. Most people aren’t getting raises every year, so this makes more sense (matching it to inflation)."

"Rentals were never meant to cost more than a mortgage. We should not be spending the majority of our paychecks on rent, when we were paying half the current cost just 7 years ago. We don’t need more apartment buildings. We need affordable housing. We need rent control everywhere, not just Massachusetts."

Oppose (32%) – "The government interceding on the free market and artificially setting/controlling prices rarely works out well in the long run. They appear to "solve" a problem in the short term and create new ones in the long term that likely would not have occured. Changing the law(s) and/or regulations around that aspect of the market is a less heavy-handed approach and, theoretically, allows public comment and input on the process."

• "If you look at almost every city that currently has rent control, they possess some of the highest rents. When you restrict an owner of charging market value, they have to continue raising the rent the maximum allowed under rent control every year in order to be able to stay at market. But what happens is rent becomes higher than other cities and builders stop building because investors cannot get returns. Rent control is not good or any government control for that matter."

"The easiest to make more affordable housing is to simply make more housing. Unfortunately the issue is more related to the availability to build in MA than simply greedy landlords. If the market was flooded with more housing the price would go down but my hunch is that is a very highly regulated building market so more housing cannot simply be built."

Unsure/other (20%) – "Rent control is good for renters, but landlords hate it. They begin to ignore the maintenance of their rental properties and evictions rise. I think, instead of an absolute cap on rents, a low annual percentage raise cap would be preferable."

• "At the federal minimum wage, a person's entire monthly wages wouldn't be enough to cover the average monthly rent on a one-bedroom apartment (using Zillow estimates). I don't know what the solution is, but that is not sustainable."